The raft of the jellyfish - Géricault Jigsaw Puzzle

The Raft of the Jellyfish is a oil-base paint on fabric, carried out between 1818 and 1819 per the painter and romantic lithographer French Theodore Géricault (1791-1824). Its initial title, given by Géricault at the time of its first presentation, is Scène of a shipwreck. This table, of very great dimension (491 cm of height and 716 cm of width), represents a tragic episode of the history of the French navy: the shipwreck of the Méduse frigate, which runs aground on a sand bank off the coasts of current Mauritania, the on July 2nd, 1816. At least 147 people are maintained at water surface on an emergency raft and only fifteen embark the on July 17th on board the Argus pheasant, a boat come to help them. Five people die shortly after their arrival in Saint-Louis of Senegal, after having endured the hunger, dehydration, the madness and even the cannibalism. The event becomes a scandal of international width, partly because a French captain serving monarchy restored recently is considered to be responsible for the disaster, because of his incompetence. The Raft of the Jellyfish has a certain continuity with the pictorial currents former to the romanticism, in particular in the choice of the subject and the dramatic character of the representation, but breaks in a clear way with the order and quietude of neo-classic painting. While choosing to represent this tragic episode for its first work of importance, Géricault is aware that the recent character of the shipwreck will arouse the interest of the public and will allow him to launch its young career. However, the artist was also caught of fascination for this event, and thus carries out abundant preparatory research and several drafts before starting the creation of the table. He indeed meets two of the survivors of the catastrophe, built a very detailed scale model of the structure of the raft, and he goes even in mortuaries and hospitals in order to see his own eyes the color and texture of the skin of dying. As Géricault has a presentiment of it, the table causes the controversy at the time of its first presentation in Paris, with the living room of 1819: some are made the burning defenders of them, while others fustigate it immediately. A little later work is exposed to London, which completes to establish the reputation of the young painter in Europe. Today, it counts among the most admired works French romanticism, and its influence is perceptible in creations of painters such as Joseph William Turner, Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet or Edouard Manet. The table, which suffers from an irreversible darkening due to a finish with the bitumen of Judaea, is preserved at the museum of the Louvre, which buys it to a friend of the artist shortly after his death in 1824.